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There is certainly not one answer to this question; each woman must decide for herself and work to achieve that professional goal. It is important to acknowledge that keeping a home and raising children must be included in "profession."

Some of us find ourselves engaged in multiple professions with none of them being more important that the other. Two months after graduation from high school, I entered the novitiate of a Franciscan Religious Order. There, I eventually entered nursing school and became a registered nurse. I loved the work I did in the emergency room and I considered that work a true ministry as I cared for those who were ill as well as their family members as they waited for a diagnosis or any news from the ER. Although I left the religious community, I have continued to work at least part time as a nurse for 35 years.

Soon after graduating from nursing school, I decided that I must earn my undergraduate degree. Nursing school was a three year program and I was simply lacking classes in my major. I was fortunate to receive a Presidential Scholarship that paid for my tuition for the year and to be offered housing by a Sister of St. Joseph (who was my department chairperson) and another Sister of the Immaculate Heart of Mary. While attending St. Ambrose College, I began to learn of the move in the Episcopal Church to ordain women deacons. I believed that ordination of women to the priesthood would follow soon.

I left my religious community and returned to Chicago where I became a member of a small Episcopal congregation. Soon after being received as an Episcopalian I began studies at Seabury Western Theological Seminary in Evanston, Illinois. This was a three year experience that I only now find myself grateful! We four women were to become "second generation women priests" and there were a number of obstacles from bishops who would not ordain us to classmates who would not associate with us.

As a priest, I have served parishes as rector (pastor), provided hospital chaplain care, volunteered for five years as a Minneapolis Police Chaplain, taught Native American Theologies at United Seminary and am now a priest in residence assisting in the wonderful parish of St. James on the Parkway.

Heterosexual marriage was not to be for me. During seminary I realized and accepted being a lesbian. Once in Minnesota I met the women I believed I would be with through our retirements. Unfortunately, that was not to happen. Susan was diagnosed with ovarian cancer five

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